Madame Runa's Most Extraordinary Twine Games Freakshow

Lords and ladies, honourable knights and virtuous dames, knaves and thieves, rogues and roguesses, blackguards and assassins, the living and the dead! Come one, come all, and marvel at the most shocking and twisted freaks gathered here for your entertainment and amusement!

*takes the mask off* Alright, folks, 'twas my attempt to bite the creepy carnival style. How did I do?

For those not in the know, Twine games could be described as a hybrid of text games and choose your own adventure books. The story is mostly told through hypertext. Some of them are quite simple, some are clearly authors' self-therapy, some are literary experiments... and some - in addition to being creatively and well written - are completely and utterly strange, unsettling and thought-provoking.

This is the kind of Twine games I would like to recommend here, one at a time. Who knows what discussions might arise from this twisted soil?

Before I go any further: these games come with a warning for disturbing imagery, violence and - in some cases - risque content. Wouldn't have it any other way, personally.

Come one, come all! Remark this most unusual freak of a Twine game!

porpentine wrote:

"We keep our faces in glass bottles so the angels can't see us.(...) But it hurts, being faceless."

Their Angelic Understanding is a story about scars, loss, and revenge. It seems alien and fantastical... until it makes almost too much sense. It was written by porpentine - and, in my not so humble opinion, damn well at that. Highly recommended!

Well, I do not know if two post in a row count as spamming, but I really wanted to recommend something and I do not know when will I have the next chance, so:

saguaro wrote:

"There's a dress shop. They sell one-size-fits-all, red ones and black ones, because evidently those are the flavors people come in."

Spoiler tagged/content warning for Eros&Tanathos and language:

Broke Down:

Broke Down by saguaro is, as the author put it, "a game about tearing shit up and getting off on it". This description is infinitely more accurate than anything I could possibly think of. Playing the game was an incredible experience, a hypertext adrenaline shot. Again, highly recommended.

Detritus by Mary Hamilton is a game about picking yourself up and moving on. Again, again, and again, with consequences that are mundane and obvious, yet somewhat chilling all the same. It's relatable, it brings back memories, and it might make one think of Diogenes.

But now that you have seen the light and tasted clean air, you'd fight like a rabid animal to stay free.

With Those We Love Alive by porpentine(again, because she is a bizzare, Twine-game-making machine and I sometimes kind of want to build her a shrine ) is a game about... what exactly? Freedom in an insect-skull-eldritch abomination autocracy? Choices? The meaning of the past? Drawing sigils on one's skin? I do not know, but something about it makes me want to play, again and again, until I find out.